


Boy

by thestarsjustblinkforus



Category: Girls (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:01:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23660491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestarsjustblinkforus/pseuds/thestarsjustblinkforus
Summary: She stares right back this time and suddenly wonders what sex with him would be like, just like, as an experiment. That ungainly body, elbows and knees all over the place. It’d be like fucking a Picasso.“I lost the cigarette,” he says showing her his empty hands and she rolls her eyes, calls him “idiot”, and hands him hers.
Relationships: Jessa Johansson/Adam Sackler
Comments: 7
Kudos: 15





	Boy

Sometimes she watches him out of the corner of her eye as they walk home from AA meetings, fascinated by the bizarre shapes he makes with his body that seems too big for sidewalks but still somehow manages to get to where it’s going without causing major destruction which would feel like a miracle except that he’s so elegant about it. Intentional.

Like right now he’s casually contorting himself to avoid cracks in the pavement muttering “just in case” under his breath and it looks like a cross between a seizure and interpretive dance and after a particularly gruesome twist she finally asks with a barely concealed laugh, “the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I like my mom now,” he explains.

Off her blank look he starts to sing loudly, dramatically, still twisting but now with jazz hands, _“Step on a crack! Break your mother’s baaack!”_ and she vaguely remembers it, the rhyme. It makes her think of a battered lunchbox smacking her knee while her little kid singsong voice bellowed _Step on a line, break your father’s spine!_ in an effort to entertain herself on a long walk home because they’d forgotten to pick her up from school again.

She stamps her foot down on the next shattered bit of pavement they encounter _just in case_ and feels him straighten slightly beside her.

His eyes flick to her face and stay there a bit too long and she remembers suddenly that he was there at the meeting where she talked about her parents, is probably remembering right now that she cried a little bit and stared at the beverage table with the terrible coffee and stale biscuits the whole time because she couldn’t bear to actually look at anyone.

She didn’t think he’d even be there, he’d said he had an audition, and she’d gotten an upsetting text that morning and felt compelled to hold herself accountable for her almost-lapse after and…

She’d avoided him afterwards. Thoroughly ditched him that night even though they were already a few weeks into their habit of walking and chain-smoking their way home.

He maneuvers himself around a tower of fruit crates, a small dog, his eyes still on her and she silently begs him to not say anything as boring as, _are you ok._

He steps on a jagged crack in the sidewalk instead.

And then stomps on it so she notices.

She cracks a smile despite herself, and he jumps on the one after that with both feet growling a little. He looks at her again, one eye hidden behind a hank of hair, searching her face and she keeps walking, maybe a little faster paced so he’ll have to catch up which takes him all of two strides to do because he is a giant.

She feels like she should let it go, drop it, just finish the walk in silence, but she has to have him know she wasn’t bothered and asks, “Why now?”

He shakes his hair out of his face, “Why now what?”

“You said you like your mum now.”

“Oh yeah, yeah. I don’t know, she came to see the kid today and it was, uh. Nice. She was nice.”

“Ah. And how is little Jessa-Hannah… Story… Chrysanthemum.”

He snorts, grins.

“Oh, you know, terrifyingly small.”

He flings out his hands, makes a shape, a baby-sized shape to indicate and she points at his open palm, “Does she fit just in there then–” and he catches her index finger and holds on.

“Yeah. Yes. Like a grapefruit.”

They continue on with her finger still trapped in his fist and after the third time she bumps into him he grabs the strap of her purse with his free hand as well, keeping them close, hip to hip, half marching.

It’s infectious, his energy tonight. It makes her want to run the rest of the way, just like this, their arms a cat’s cradle, their sides glued to each other as awkward as it is with him being so fucking tall.

It reminds her of being a kid. The good parts.

He slows them as they reach the bodega on the corner and he turns his head to look down at her, “I’m gonna getta Gatorade, you want one?”

“Nah.”

They disentangle, and she takes a step back, but he reaches out and yanks her purse strap once more before going inside.

She watches him for a bit through the window moving like a shark down the aisle, leaning his forehead against the glass trying to decide on a flavor before suddenly whipping the door open and grabbing a bottle like it’s about to escape. He turns on his heel and glides to the counter where he laughs with his teeth at something the cashier says.

She echoes his yank on her purse strap, looks away when he laughs again and suddenly feels dumb for waiting, he hadn’t asked her to wait, but he grins when he sees she’s still there and it’s nice.

He shakes the Gatorade bottle at her. “You suuuuure? It’s _Orange_ …”

“Disgusting.”

“You’re disgusting.”

They keep walking. He chugs the thing and tosses it half a block later and then he starts staring again.

“What?”

“I’m trying to figure out what kinda fucken…. mythical beast you’d be.”

“You are like, the weirdest person.”

He pauses, considering some more and then snaps his fingers.

“You’d be a whaddaya call ‘em – the fucked up looking thing that’s like a half eagle, half uhhhh cat. Lion. What’s that called?”

“I have no idea.”

He makes a squawking noise like that might help and growls swooping down on her, his clawed hands hovering over her shoulders.

She smirks, “You think I’m fucked up looking?”

“Nah, you’rrrrre. You know. Nice. You’re nice looking. You have nice hair.”

He bumps into her when she misses a step, his chest to her back, and he drops his arms, his hands landing briefly on her hips before immediately moving over to walk beside her again.

“You’re ah…” she searches for a cigarette in her purse, holds one out to him while she busies herself further with looking for her lighter. “A dog. One of those dogs. That looks like a werewolf.”

He takes the offered cigarette and turns in some kind of approximation of a transformation and then takes off in a lumbering run, fucking howling as she finally finds her lighter and lights one for herself.

He stops abruptly at the end of the block to wait for her, shaking his hair out of his eyes again, collapsing back against the glass window of a Duane Reade like an indolent teenager before immediately straightening when she approaches, his knee buckling slightly when she meets his eyes.

She stares right back this time and suddenly wonders what sex with him would be like, just like, as an experiment. That ungainly body, elbows and knees all over the place. It’d be like fucking a Picasso.

“I lost the cigarette,” he says showing her his empty hands and she rolls her eyes, calls him “idiot”, and hands him hers.

—

He talks about Hannah.

Not by name, but it’s clear, and his eyes flit over their faces and land on hers and stay and he stutters a little before looking away and it feels like a punch to the gut, that little hitch in his breath.

_“Why didn’t you warn me”_

_“It’s not my job.”_

The only time they’d ever talked about it, if that even constituted as talking about it, he’d just wandered off down the street after instead of going to Ray’s party because he said he wanted to see Hannah too much which meant he couldn’t.

She had watched him go and maybe felt guilty for the first time for urging him to move on when Hannah went to Iowa. Felt guilty for introducing him to Mimi Rose.

It had all been part of a plan to get Ace, which turned out to be a giant fucking mistake, but also… she had been mad at Hannah. For leaving. She had wanted to hurt her maybe. Deep down she must have wanted to do that. She did do that.

Adam was just collateral damage at the time.

Which she hadn’t given a shit about until she saw his face right before he turned to go and he looked like he was going to cry and she thought, _fuck_.

She’s ashamed of herself for all of it and someday she’ll admit to it out loud. Either in a crowd of semi-familiar strangers or him when they’re like this, in the dark, walking. Someday to Hannah maybe too, but Hannah forgives her things more easily without them being directly addressed because there’s a history there.

She has no history with Adam beyond getting him arrested, running into him at AA meetings and their walks home after. On paper it’s not much to stick around for.

And she’s the villain of the story he’s telling them. They don’t know it, and he’s not saying it, but she is.

She grabs her coat and hides in the bathroom after.

She waits until she’s sure he’s gone but finds him waiting for her on the stoop outside, leaning next to an imprint of his hand in the snow.

They walk in silence. No chatting, no random observations of passersby, no theatrics. His hands are shoved deep into his coat pockets, gloveless like hers, and she can feel his eyes, she can always feel his eyes, knows when he’s looking, and wonders if he wants to bring it up.

She has _Do you want her back? Do you want my help? I don’t think it’s serious with Fran and besides Fran is a terrible name for a boyfriend anyway for fuckssake_ ready to go. She has _I’m really really fucking sorry, Adam_ ready to go but he looks away as soon as she meets his eyes and he starts whistling some tune she doesn’t know.

She thinks, _fuck_.

_Fuck._

_Just say it,_ she thinks, _‘I don’t want to be your friend anymore, Jessa.’_

She shoves her hands into her pockets too, pretending to be unbothered and encounters one of those disgusting crumbly biscuits that are always at these meetings and that he always finds ways of sneaking into her pockets when she’s not paying attention. Usually she ends up throwing them at him and he laughs and dodges and runs ahead but she keeps her hand curved around it, careful not to crush it.

He salutes her when they get to her door, turns on his heel and goes and he gets halfway down the block when she calls out to his back before she can think, before she can stop herself, “Adam-”

He falters, turns after a second that feels like a million.

“I’m…”

He takes a step or two closer waiting for her to finish, rocks back and forth for a moment like trying to decide which direction to go, back to her or away, and she takes a deep breath and comes to him instead.

“A cunt. I’m a cunt.”

“What’d you do?”

“You. And Hannah. Obviously.”

He blinks at her, frowns.

“What about me and Hannah?”

“I told you to move on, I introduced you to-”

He shakes his head, backs up a step, does the rocking thing again and she feels like she did a handful of months ago standing in front of the police station begging and he swallows, he shakes his head again and says, “Nah. Nah.”

“Adam-”

“I wanted to. Move on. You said I should be happy. Like Hannah was happy. In fuckin’ Iowa. You were right. It just got fucked. Wasn’t your fault.”

“You’re not angry with me, then?”

“Nah.”

“You sure?”

He nods an exaggerated nod. She’s not sure she believes him so she finally says it, what she’s been meaning to say. What she should have said 6 months ago.

“Yeah… well… I’m fucking sorry anyway.” She rocks back on her feet like he rocks back on his feet. “If you want to hire a hit man for Fran, I know a guy.”

He laughs a big Adam laugh and she feels like maybe she hasn’t lost this yet after all.

—

He pulls at the neck of his t-shirt, groaning in agony and reaches out to take hold of the back of hers, flapping it against her back like a fan as they walk.

She’s so fucking sweaty, they’re both so fucking sweaty and heat-drunk and she doesn’t want the cigarette she’s smoking she wants air conditioning and ice cream, iced coffee. What he’s doing with her shirt feels good though.

She watches a bead of sweat slide down his collarbone and says “I had a dream about you last night,” before she can stop herself.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“What kinda dream?”

“I don’t know. Weird.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah.” She passes him her unwanted cigarette, exhales a final plume.

“Weeeeird- _hot_?” She doesn’t answer and he smokes, coughs. “Tell me you at least came.”

She laughs and he looks serious for half a second before he laughs too, a beat too late, his eyes on hers.

He yanks on the back of her shirt.

“Did you?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, like a _bunch_.”

When they get to her building he holds onto the back of her t-shirt for a moment longer before he lets go so she can climb the stairs and he takes a step towards her instead of away and looks up at her, arms spread, hands on either side of the railing, trapping her between his body and the front door.

He sways, closer, then away, closer -

She says, “See you at Marnie’s thing,” and slips inside, leaving him behind.

She pauses in the vestibule. Thinks about inviting him up with a lie about having an air conditioner.

Her phone buzzes in her bra as she’s about to reach for the doorknob and she takes it out.

_**How many times is a bunch** _

_**?** _

Sweat drips down her back and she remembers his mouth there, the dream of his mouth there and other places, but she doesn’t respond to the text and she doesn’t open the door.

She leans back against the mailboxes, the tips of her fingers dipping below the waistband of her shorts and she lets herself think about his fucking eyes.

It’s been creeping up on her slowly like a sickness that she didn’t bother to tend to but let happen because she expected it to just pass anyway like it always does. Everyone she has ever been attracted to has ultimately proved to be utterly boring so it’s usually only a matter of waiting it out.

The problem is he’s not boring.


End file.
